Off-Site Oil Storage

When a generator transformer fails the station owners can lose £1 million per day for each day of an unplanned outage so it is imperative that no time is lost in getting a spare transformer moved into place.

One of the decisions that needs to be taken is “what to do with the oil” – when a 275kV generator transformer in the North of England failed in service the decision was made to call EOS to drain the oil and remove it from site for storage at its Ellesmere Port operational base. With the “quality chain” monitored by in-house chemist Alex Williams the customer was comfortable that his oil would be returned to site in as good a condition as it came out of the transformer – and at a fraction of the cost of replacement unused oil.

EOS has developed strict quality plans for this service covering collection of oil in oil-flushed tankers to off loading into dedicated 50 tonne storage tanks all fitted with breathers. Samples are taken at each stage of the operation and tested by Alex to ensure a clear quality audit trail.

After 3 weeks the spare transformer was in place and ready to be filled with oil. EOS supplied a state of the art Mobile Processing Unit to pull vacuum for 36 hours before co-ordinating with Alex and the dedicated EOS field service admin team to redeliver the stored oil at 6 hour intervals. The oil came in quality assured and flushed tankers and went into the transformer via the MPU to assure absolute dryness and quality.